Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Biggest Haul Ever

The $700 billion bailout is about the same size as the dollar cash money supply in North America (that is, excluding dollars held as reserve currency in foreign sovereign banks).

The robbers in the Securitas Depot Robbery of 2006 made off with $92 million. This is the largest robbery in the western world, surpassed only but hugely by the $1 billion heist of cash from the Central Bank of Iraq in 2003, which was curiously similar to current events in that it appears to have been made possible by the actions of the Republicans in the U.S. government. In that case, it was the initiation of bombing of Bagdad. The current mess traces back to the Gramm-Leach act of 1999 which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which was intended to prevent banks from engaging in risky investment practices such as those that had caused the banking collapse in early 1933.

But neither of those robberies is anything like the size of the bailout. Imagine that some group managed to knock over every single bank, not just in one city, but in all of them. Not just the banks, but the convenience stores, groceries, businesses. Not just those but swiped the cash from every house and every wallet of every person in the United States. What a haul! It's positively Grinchian in scope.

Now imagine that those responsible are being paid a salary by the federal government. And that the folks they are turning the money over to are being paid extra to figure out what to do with it!